But it is a National Holiday for the USA, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and these images taken two days ago seemed an appropriate ‘holiday’ post.
Follows of Learning from Dogs will remember that back on the 15th December I devoted a Sunday post, Picture parade twenty-one, to pictures of deer cautiously coming to feed when Jean was in their presence.
Now, some five weeks later, one of those deer has overcome fear to the point of taking a piece of bread from Jean’s hand. Here is the sequence of photographs taken last Saturday afternoon. N.B. We do not feed the deer bread as a routine; it’s not good for them.
Cars travel through flood water in Helston, south-west Cornwall – Daily Mail August, 2013
You can tell, undoubtedly, from the title and sub-title to today’s post that I am feeling somewhat forlorn about the way that we humans work things out! As the old saying goes, “Question:Why has Planet Earth never been visited by an alien species?Answer:Because they have seen no signs of intelligent life!“
This feeling is a result of reading a recent essay from George Monbiot, Drowning in Money. It is republished here within his terms of sharing.
Now before you read it, if you are not living in the UK it would be easy to reject the messages as being only relevant to the United Kingdom. But when you do read it, you will agree that this level of government policy stupidity is not the sole reserve of the UK. The ‘virus’ is alive and well elsewhere!
ooOOoo
George Monbiot
Drowning in Money
January 13, 2014
The hidden and remarkable story of why devastating floods keep happening. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th January 2014.
We all know what’s gone wrong, or we think we do: not enough spending on flood defences. It’s true that the government’s cuts have exposed thousands of homes to greater risk, and that the cuts will become more dangerous as climate change kicks in (1). But too little public spending is a small part of problem. It is dwarfed by another factor, which has been overlooked in discussions in the media and statements by the government: too much public spending.
Vast amounts of public money – running into the billions – are spent every year on policies that make devastating floods inevitable. This is the story that has not been told by the papers or the broadcasters, a story of such destructive perversity that the Guardian has given me twice the usual space today in which to explain it.
Flood defence, or so we are told almost everywhere, is about how much concrete you can pour. It’s about not building houses in stupid places on the floodplain, and about using clever new engineering techniques to defend those already there (2). None of that is untrue, but it’s a small part of the story. To listen to the dismal debates of the past fortnight you could be forgiven for believing that rivers arise in the plains; that there is no such thing as upstream; that mountains, hills, catchments and watersheds are irrelevant to the question of whether or not homes and infrastructure get drowned.
The story begins with a group of visionary farmers at Pontbren, in the headwaters of Britain’s longest river, the Severn. In the 1990s they realised that the usual hill farming strategy – loading the land with more and bigger sheep, grubbing up the trees and hedges, digging more drains – wasn’t working. It made no economic sense, the animals had nowhere to shelter, the farmers were breaking their backs to wreck their own land.
So they devised something beautiful. They began planting shelter belts of trees along the contours. They stopped draining the wettest ground and built ponds to catch the water instead. They cut and chipped some of the wood they grew to make bedding for their animals, which meant that they no longer spent a fortune buying straw. Then they used the composted bedding, in a perfect closed loop, to cultivate more trees (3).
One day a government consultant was walking over their fields during a rainstorm. He noticed something that fascinated him: the water flashing off the land suddenly disappeared when it reached the belts of trees the farmers had planted. This prompted a major research programme, which produced the following astonishing results: water sinks into the soil under the trees at 67 times the rate at which it sinks into the soil under the grass (4). The roots of the trees provide channels down which the water flows, deep into the ground. The soil there becomes a sponge, a reservoir which sucks up water then releases it slowly. In the pastures, by contrast, the small sharp hooves of the sheep puddle the ground, making it almost impermeable: a hard pan off which the rain gushes.
One of the research papers estimates that, even though only 5% of the Pontbren land has been reforested, if all the farmers in the catchment did the same thing, flooding peaks downstream would be reduced by some 29% (5). Full reforestation would reduce the peaks by around 50% (6). For the residents of Shrewsbury, Gloucester and the other towns ravaged by endless Severn floods, that means, more or less, problem solved.
Did I say the results were astonishing? Well, not to anyone who has studied hydrology elsewhere. For decades the British government has been funding scientists working in the tropics, and using their findings to advise other countries to protect the forests or to replant trees in the hills, to prevent communities downstream from being swept away. But we forgot to bring the lesson home.
So will the rest of the Severn catchment, and those of the other unruly waterways of Britain, follow the Pontbren model? The authorities say they would love to do it (7). In theory. Natural Resources Wales told me that these techniques “are hard wired in to the actions we want land managers to undertake.” (8) What it forgot to say is that all tree planting grants in Wales have now been stopped. The offices responsible for administering them are in the process of closing down (9). If other farmers want to copy the Pontbren model, not only must they pay for the trees themselves; but they must sacrifice the money they would otherwise have been paid for farming that land.
For – and here we start to approach the nub of the problem – there is an unbreakable rule laid down by the Common Agricultural Policy. If you want to receive your single farm payment – by the far biggest component of farm subsidies – that land has to be free from what it calls “unwanted vegetation” (10). Land covered by trees is not eligible. The subsidy rules have enforced the mass clearance of vegetation from the hills.
Just as the tree planting grants have stopped, the land clearing grants have risen. In his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, made during the height of the floods, the environment secretary Owen Paterson boasted that hill farmers “on the least-productive land” will now receive “the same direct payment rate on their upland farmland as their lowland counterparts.” (11) In other words, even in places where farming makes no sense because the land is so poor, farmers will now be paid more money to keep animals there. But to receive this money, they must first remove the trees and scrub that absorb the water falling on the hills.
And that’s just the start of it. One result of the latest round of subsidy negotiations – concluded in June last year – is that governments can now raise the special mountain payments, whose purpose is to encourage farming at the top of the watersheds, from €250 per hectare to €450 (12). This money should be renamed the flooding subsidy: it pays for the wreckage of homes, the evacuation of entire settlements, the drowning of people who don’t get away in time, all over Europe. Pig-headed idiocy doesn’t begin to describe it.
The problem is not confined to livestock in the mountains. In the foothills and lowlands, the misuse of heavy machinery, overstocking with animals and other forms of bad management can – by compacting the soil – increase the rates of instant run-off from 2% of all the rain that falls on the land to 60%(13).
Sometimes, ploughing a hillside in the wrong way at the wrong time of the year can cause a flood – of both mud and water – even without exceptional rainfall. This practice has blighted homes around the South Downs (that arguably should never have been ploughed at all). One house was flooded 31 times in the winter of 2000-2001 by muddy floods caused by ploughing (14). Another, in Suffolk, above which the fields had been churned up by pigs, was hit 50 times (15). But a paper on floods of this kind found that “there are no (or only very few) control measures taken yet in the UK.” (16)
Under the worst environment secretary this country has ever suffered, there seems little chance that much of this will change. In November, in response to calls to reforest the hills, Owen Paterson told parliament “I am absolutely clear that we have a real role to play in helping hill farmers to keep the hills looking as they do.” (17) (Bare, in other words). When asked by a parliamentary committee to discuss how the resilience of river catchments could be improved, the only thing he could think of was building more reservoirs (18).
But while he is cavalier and ignorant when it comes to managing land to reduce the likelihood of flooding, he goes out of his way to sow chaos when it comes to managing rivers.
Many years ago, river managers believed that the best way to prevent floods was to straighten, canalise and dredge rivers along much of their length, to enhance their capacity for carrying water. They soon discovered that this was not just wrong but counterproductive. A river can, at any moment, carry very little of the water that falls on its catchment: the great majority must be stored in the soils and on the floodplains.
By building ever higher banks around the rivers, by reducing their length through taking out the bends and by scooping out the snags and obstructions along the way, engineers unintentionally did two things. They increased the rate of flow, meaning that flood waters poured down the rivers and into the nearest towns much faster. And, by separating the rivers from the rural land through which they passed, they greatly decreased the area of functional floodplains (19, 20, 21).
The result, as authorities all over the world now recognise, was catastrophic. In many countries, chastened engineers are now putting snags back into the rivers, reconnecting them to uninhabited land that they can safely flood and allowing them to braid and twist and form oxbow lakes. These features catch the sediment and the tree trunks and rocks which otherwise pile up on urban bridges, and take much of the energy and speed out of the river. Rivers, as I was told by the people who had just rewilded one in the Lake District – greatly reducing the likelihood that it would cause floods downstream – “need something to chew on” (22, 23).
There are one or two other such projects in the UK: Paterson’s department is funding four rewilding schemes, to which it has allocated a grand total of, er, £1 million (24). Otherwise, the secretary of state is doing everything he can to prevent these lessons from being applied. Last year he was reported to have told a conference that “the purpose of waterways is to get rid of water” (25). In another speech he lambasted the previous government for a “blind adherence to Rousseauism” in refusing to dredge (26). Not only will there be more public dredging, he insists: but there will also be private dredging: landowners can now do it themselves (27).
After he announced this policy, the Environment Agency, which is his department’s statutory adviser, warned that dredging could “speed up flow and potentially increase the risk of flooding downstream.” (28) Elsewhere, his officials have pointed out that “protecting large areas of agricultural land in the floodplain tends to increase flood risk for downstream communities.” (29) The Pitt Review, commissioned by the previous government after the horrible 2007 floods, concluded that “dredging can make the river banks prone to erosion, and hence stimulate a further build-up of silt, exacerbating rather than improving problems with water capacity.” (30) Paterson has been told repeatedly that it makes more sense to pay farmers to store water in their fields, rather than shoving it off their land and into the towns.
But he has ignored all this advice and started seven pilot projects in which farmers will be permitted to drag all that messy wildlife habitat out of their rivers, to hurry the water down to the nearest urban pinch point (31). Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to discover that Paterson has demanded massive cuts at the Environment Agency, including many of the staff responsible for preventing floods (32).
Since 2007, there has been a review, a parliamentary enquiry, two bills, new flood management programmes (33), but next to nothing has changed. Floods, because of the way we manage our land and rivers, remain inevitable. We pay a fortune in farm subsidies and river-mangling projects to have our towns flooded and homes and lives wrecked. We pay again in the form of the flood defences necessitated by these crazy policies, and through the extra insurance payments – perhaps we should call them the Paterson tax – levied on all homes. But we also pay through the loss of everything else that watersheds give us: beauty, tranquility, wildlife and, oh yes, the small matter of water in the taps.
In the Compleat Angler, published in 1653, Izaac Walton wrote this. “I think the best Trout-anglers be in Derbyshire; for the waters there are clear to an extremity.” (34) No longer. Last summer I spent a weekend walking along the River Dove and its tributaries, where Walton used to fish. All along the river, including the stretch on which the fishing hut built for him by Charles Cotton still stands, the water was a murky blueish brown. The beds of clean gravel he celebrated were smothered in silt: on some bends the accretions of mud were several feet deep.
You had only to raise your eyes to see the problem: the badly-ploughed hills of the mid-catchment and above them the drained and burnt moors of the Peak District National Park, comprehensively trashed by grouse shooting estates. A recent report by Animal Aid found that grouse estates in England, though they serve only the super-rich, receive some £37m of public money every year in the form of subsidies (35). Much of this money is used to cut and burn them, which is likely to be a major cause of flooding (36). Though there had been plenty of rain throughout the winter and early spring, the river was already low and sluggish.
A combination of several disastrous forms of upland management has been helping Walton’s beloved river to flood, with the result that both government and local people have had to invest heavily in the Lower Dove flood defence scheme (37). But this wreckage has also caused it to dry up when the rain doesn’t fall.
That’s the flipside of a philosophy which believes that land exists only to support landowners, and waterways exist only “to get rid of water”. Instead of a steady flow sustained around the year by trees in the hills, by sensitive farming methods, by rivers which are allowed to find their own course and their own level, to filter and hold back their waters through bends and braiding and obstructions, we get a cycle of flood and drought. We get filthy water and empty aquifers and huge insurance premiums and ruined carpets. And all of it at public expense.
4. M. R. Marshall et al, 2013. The impact of rural land management changes on soil hydraulic properties and runoff processes: results from experimental plots in upland UK. Hydrological Processes, DOI: 10.1002/hyp.9826. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.9826/abstract
9. I talked to one of the employees over the weekend: everyone is being made redundant as all funding has ceased.
10. Official Journal of the European Union, 31st January 2009. Council Regulation (EC) No 73/2009 of 19 January 2009, establishing common rules for direct support schemes for farmers under the common agricultural policy and establishing certain support schemes for farmers, amending Regulations (EC) No 1290/2005, (EC) No 247/2006, (EC) No 378/2007 and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1782/2003. Annex III. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:030:0016:0016:EN:PDF
15. R. Evans, 2010. Runoff and soil erosion in arable Britain: changes in perception and policy since 1945. Environmental Science and Policy 13, pp 1 4 1 – 1 4 9. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2010.01.001
23. I hope before long to write up the extraordinary story I was told by a representative of United Utilities about the sharply differing responses of the rewilded River Liza in Ennerdale and the still-canalised St John’s Beck in Thirlmere to the famous 2009 downpour.
Just to underline that message of it not being only the UK with crazy policies, the photograph below is of a forest ridge within sight of the house here in Oregon.
A local ridge demonstrating ‘clear-cutting’ mania poking above the valley mist.
On Monday and Tuesday of the week I posted Legitimate Anger and Legitimate Hope. (And please see the footnote to today’s post)
Patrice Ayme left the following comment to the Legitimate Hope post:
It’s hard to live with elephants, especially in poor, crowded conditions. I remember bathing in Africa as a child with a bull elephant 200 meters away, on the other side of a stream, and being extremely worried, with all in attendance.
Europe used to have elephants, and North America, two species. Time to reintroduce them, and live according to our discourse.
Rewilding Euramerica can be done, and should be done, for the deepest philosophical and emotional reasons, and will create new, very productive jobs.
PA
Then on Friday came an email from reader and blogger Martin Lack:
It was but a moment to go across to The Conversation website (rather liked what I saw, by the way) and find the article that Martin linked to. It is republished here within the terms of The Conversation site.
ooOOoo
Restore large carnivores to save struggling ecosystems
By William Ripple, Oregon State University
We are losing our large carnivores. In ecosystems around the world, the decline of large predators such as lions, bears, dingoes, wolves, and otters is changing landscapes, from the tropics to the Arctic. Habitat loss, persecution by humans and loss of prey have combined to inflict great losses on these populations.
In fact more than 75% of the 31 largest carnivore species are declining, and 17 species now occupy less than half their former ranges. Southeast Asia, southern and East Africa, and the Amazon are among areas in which multiple large carnivore species are declining. And with only a few exceptions, large carnivores have already been exterminated from much of the developed world, including areas of Western Europe, and the eastern United States.
Top dogs keep ecosystems in order
Many of these large carnivore species are endangered and some are at risk of extinction, either in specific regions or entirely. Ironically, they are vanishing just as we are learning about their important ecological effects, which is what led us to write a new paper in the journal Science to document their role.
From a review of published reports, we singled out seven species that have been studied for their important ecological role and widespread effects, known as trophic cascades. These are the African lion, leopard, Eurasian lynx, cougar, gray wolf, sea otter and dingo.
Based on field research, my Oregon State University co-author Robert Beschta and I documented the impact of cougars and wolves on the regeneration of forest tree stands and riverside vegetation in Yellowstone and other national parks in western North America. Fewer predators, we found, lead to an increase in browsing animals such as deer and elk. More browsing disrupts vegetation, reduces birds and some mammals and changes other parts of the ecosystem. From the actions of the top predator, widespread impacts cascade down the food chain.
Similar effects were found in studies of Eurasian lynx, dingoes, lions and sea otters. For example in Europe, absence of lynx has been closely tied to the abundance of roe deer, red fox and hare. In Australia, the construction of a 3,400-mile dingo-proof fence has enabled scientists to study ecosystems with and without dingoes which are closely related to gray wolves. They found that dingoes control populations of herbivores and exotic red foxes. The suppression of these species by dingoes reduces predation pressure, benefiting plants and smaller native prey.
In some parts of Africa, the decrease of lions and leopards has coincided with a dramatic increase in olive baboons, which threaten crops and livestock. In the waters off southeast Alaska, a decline in sea otters through killer whale predation has led to a rise in sea urchins and loss of kelp beds.
Predators are integral, not expendable
We are now obtaining a deeper appreciation of the impact of large carnivores on ecosystems, a view that can be traced back to the work of landmark ecologist Aldo Leopold. The perception that predators are harmful and deplete fish and wildlife is outdated. Many scientists and wildlife managers now recognise the growing evidence of carnivores’ complex role in ecosystems, and their social and economic benefits. Leopold recognised these relationships, but his observations were ignored for decades after his death in 1948.
Top carnivores, at work keeping things in check. Doug Smith
Human tolerance of these species is the major issue. Most would agree these animals have an intrinsic right to exist, but additionally they provide economic and ecological services that people value. Among the services documented in other studies are carbon sequestration, restoration of riverside ecosystems, biodiversity and disease control. For example, wolves may limit large herbivore populations, thus decreasing browsing on young trees that sequester carbon when they escape browsing and grow taller. Where large carnivore populations have been restored – such as wolves in Yellowstone or Eurasian lynx in Finland – ecosystems appear to be bouncing back.
I am impressed with how resilient the Yellowstone ecosystem is, and while ecosystem restoration isn’t happening quickly everywhere in this park, it has started. In some cases where vegetation loss has led to soil erosion, for example, full restoration may not be possible in the near term. What is certain is that ecosystems and the elements of them are highly interconnected. The work at Yellowstone and other places shows how species affect each another through different pathways. It’s humbling as a scientist to witness this interconnectedness of nature.
My co-authors and I have called for an international initiative to conserve large carnivores in co-existence with people. This effort could be modelled after a couple of other successful efforts including the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, a non-profit scientific group affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the Global Tiger Initiative which involves all 13 of the tiger-range countries. With more tolerance by humans, we might be able to avoid extinctions. The world would be a scary place without these predators.
William Ripple does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
In 2011, more African elephants were killed than any other year in history. The figures for 2012 and 2013 are not yet known, but are likely to be even higher. At current rates, in twelve years, there will be none left.
It is a familiar cause, but it has never been more urgent. Poaching has turned industrial. Armed militia fly in helicopters over jungle clearings, machine gunning down entire herds. Their tusks are then sold to fund war and terrorism throughout the continent and the wider world. Ivory is still illegal, but as China booms, it is more popular than ever.
This campaign will raise money to support rangers on the ground to protect Kenya’s elephants from armed poachers, together with Space for Giants’ longer term work to create new wildlife sanctuaries where elephants will be safe, forever. More can be found about the charity at Space for Giants
The article above includes two videos. A shorter one that can be viewed on the paper’s campaign website. Then there is a longer, five-minute, video also on YouTube and included below.
Jean and I wanted to make a donation but found that without a UK bank account/UK Visa card it wasn’t possible. We contacted Space for Giants and received the following email from Amy.
Hi Paul
Sorry for the difficulties and thank you for your perseverance!
You can donate in USD through our CrowdRise page at www.crowdrise.com/spaceforgiants1. These funds are sent to TUSK USA who will then allocate them to us.
Alternatively, you can make out a cheque to ‘TUSK USA’ and send to TUSK USA, 40 East 94th Street, Apt 3A, New York, NY 10128 – please attach a covering note confirming that you would like your donation to be used to support the work of Space for Giants.
Many thanks,
Amy.
So if there’s anyone else out there not in the UK who would like to donate, here’s another option.
Please, for all our sakes, help these beautiful creatures.
Many will have read yesterday’s post about the slaughter of elephants by ivory poachers and felt, as I did, a feeling of despair in the pit of one’s soul. We seem to be living in such challenging times with so much madness about us. It’s incredibly easy to feel as if this is some sort of ‘end of times’ period.
Today’s post tells us that there is always hope.
Let’s remind ourselves that elephants are very intelligent animals. As I wrote last November in a post with the title of Smart Animals:
There was a fascinating article on the BBC news website a few weeks ago that went on to explain:
10 October 2013
Elephants ‘understand human gesture’
By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC News
African elephants have demonstrated what appears to be an instinctive understanding of human gestures, according to UK scientists. In a series of tests, researcher Ann Smet, of the University of St Andrews, offered the animals a choice between two identical buckets, then pointed at the one containing a hidden treat.
From the first trial, the elephants chose the correct bucket.
In 2011, more African elephants were killed than any other year in history. The figures for 2012 and 2013 are not yet known, but are likely to be even higher. At current rates, in twelve years, there will be none left.
It is a familiar cause, but it has never been more urgent. Poaching has turned industrial. Armed militia fly in helicopters over jungle clearings, machine gunning down entire herds. Their tusks are then sold to fund war and terrorism throughout the continent and the wider world. Ivory is still illegal, but as China booms, it is more popular than ever.
This campaign will raise money to support rangers on the ground to protect Kenya’s elephants from armed poachers, together with Space for Giants’ longer term work to create new wildlife sanctuaries where elephants will be safe, forever. More can be found about the charity at Space for Giants
The article above includes two videos. A shorter one that can be viewed on the paper’s campaign website. Then there is a longer, five-minute, video also on YouTube and included below.
Then there is the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust helping animals in Africa. And, finally, the campaign over at Bloody Ivory where one can sign a petition and donate towards stopping elephant poaching.
Thus, like so many aspects of life, never give up trying to help those less fortunate.
What a greedy, selfish race of people we can be at times!
I’m writing about the subject of elephants. Or, to put it more precisely and distastefully, the murder of elephants. For the ivory in their tusks.
The post was prompted by a recent item over on Chris Snuggs’ blog Nemo Insula Est. Chris and I have known each other for quite a few years now; since the time that he was Head of Studies at the French college, ISUGA, in Quimper, France and where I attended as a visiting teacher running a class on Sales & Marketing.
Chris has allowed me to republish the piece in full. Please read today’s post and then come back tomorrow to see in what ways we can all help.
ooOOoo
The Human Shame in Northern Kenya
03JAN
One of my NYRs was to stop reading bad news, but that lasted about 6 hours ….. there is of course so much of it, and so much that is utterly depressing. One of the first of 2014 was an article in “The Independent”:
Elephant Appeal: Few are willing to say just how bad the poaching crisis is – the elephant population may easily fall into terminal decline
Tragic, to the extreme!
You can get all the details from the article – which is pretty harrowing, with surviving elephants described as being “stricken with grief” as they cluster round their slaughtered brethren – but basically, elephants in the Tsavo East National Park in Northern Kenya are under threat of extinction from poachers from Somalia. This provoked a number of reactions on my part:
DEMAND
The price of ivory depends on the demand and supply. The former is very strong and apparently rising, especially in China. For extraordinarily moronic and selfish reasons, ivory is considered artistic and – for example – tiger and rhinoceros parts medicinal and/or possessing aphrodysiac properties.
Can China really do NOTHING to stop this cultural abomination? People in the west for the most part stopped acquiring ivory years ago.
If China – and other Asia nations – cannot or will not do anything, should the west not apply more pressure? Same applies of course to China’s support of North Korea. YES, sanctions are painful, but nothing NON-painful is likely to work.
THE POACHERS
They are execrable, of course …… and yet, many may be extremely poor, and indeed ignorant. There is no excuse in the strictest sense, but it may to some extent be understandable if they see a chance to make several years’ normal income in a single day. This is no different from City bankers, or indeed the Enron directors and many others: greed is sadly rampant on our planet.
There are insufficient funds to patrol the parks properly. Kenya is just one more corrupt African state where politicians earn a fortune while basic needs and services are severely underfunded.
MORALITY
So, there is a lack of funds to prevent the poacher-killers. Yet a few hundred miles away, vast sums of money are squandered on obscene luxuries.
I always wonder what if anything goes through the minds of those who spend these obscene sums on frippery and personal self-glorification. Do they ever think that their money could do immense good elsewhere? Would WE be just the same in their shoes?
Is there any solution to this greed?
ooOOoo
Chris wrote his post motivated by the article in The Independent UK newspaper. But that newspaper was not alone in promulgating the despicable killings of these smart and magnificent creatures. Here’s a story that was in the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper a year ago.
Horror as entire family of elephants slaughtered for ivory
Armed wildlife rangers on Tuesday night fanned out across eastern Kenya in pursuit of ivory poachers who killed an entire family of 12 elephants in the country’s worst single such slaughter since the 1980s.
Eleven adults and one infant calf died in a “targeted and efficient” attack highlighting the growing professionalism of poachers bankrolled by international criminals supplying soaring demand for ivory in the Far East.
Six of the animals lay in one heap, their tusks hacked out with machetes.
None of the family group managed to flee further than 300 yards before they were gunned down and their ivory removed.
The calf, less than a year old, is believed to have been crushed by its dying mother as she fell to the ground.
“It is unimaginable, a heinous, heinous crime,” said Paul Udoto, spokesman for the KenyaWildlife Service (KWS).
“We have not seen such an incident in recent memory, it’s the worst single loss that we have on record, and our records go back almost 30 years.
“These were professional killers. The attack was targeted and efficient.”
The poachers, armed with automatic rifles, had already fled but there were hopes last night that a massive search involving foot patrols, a dozen vehicles and three aircraft could still find them.
“Every possible resource is being deployed to track down these criminals,” Mr Udoto said. “They will feel the full force of the law.”
But the area where the elephants were killed, in the north of Kenya’s largest wildlife reserve, Tsavo East National Park, is sparsely populated, has few roads, and lies close to Kenya’s border with Somalia.
Privately, conservationists said they feared the poachers and their haul of 22 tusks, worth an estimated GBP175,000 on the Asian market, would already have escaped.
The attack was the latest in a surge of elephant deaths that has seen the number of the animals killed for their ivory in Kenya increase sevenfold in five years, from fewer than 50 in 2007 to 360 in 2012, according to KWS figures.
The increase has led many wildlife experts to declare the current situation a crisis worse even than the mass slaughter of Africa’s elephants in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to a global ivory trade ban in 1989.
I don’t have permission to republish the article so please go here and read the full piece and view a couple of harrowing photographs.
Then come back tomorrow and explore how you and I can do something to help. Please.
The first of the New Year and dedicated to Sue of Sue Dreamwalker.
A week ago, Sue left a nice comment about our ‘backyard’ here in Oregon. Specifically with regard to the two photographs of deer feeding in front of the house. I replied by saying that today I would offer a selection of views of our property.
First off, an aerial view with the property boundary line overlaid, taken from the sale particulars. The right-hand, Eastern boundary follows the edge of Hugo Road. We are some four miles from Merlin in Southern Oregon.
Thirteen acres orientated West-East.
The solid blue line is the course of Bummer Creek that flows from top to bottom of the image. The thin, dotted blue line is the driveway that runs from Hugo Road up to the house, a distance of a 1/4 mile. The house is close to the Western boundary almost hidden from sight in this picture by the trees. There is a faint label ‘The House’ just below the building.
From left to right: Pharaoh, Sweeny, Cleo and Hazel.
The above photograph was taken from a point about half-way along the driveway, the house being behind the camera. Ahead, the driveway dips down to cross the bridge over the Creek, as the following picture reveals. Luckily the boundary fence is dog-proof!
oooo
Dogs and water!
Pharaoh in Bummer Creek just downstream of the bridge.
Looking further downstream from the bridge.
oooo
Looking upstream from the bridge.
The barrier across the Creek seen in the upper half of the photograph is a flood irrigation dam installed many years ago, presumably for agricultural purposes before the plot was sold for house building prior to 1977. One installs an iron pole on a centre bolt embedded in the dam and then places a stout plank across the flow on top of the dam. The plank can just be seen to the right of the dam, resting on the bank. Never tried the dam but going to some day!
Looking to the West up towards the house.
The above picture was taken close to where the previous one was shot. Simply by swinging around to the left and looking back up. The house is barely visible in the background behind the metal gate and wooden fence posts in the middle of the photograph.
Corinne’s field visible through the trees and undergrowth.
Again, the picture above is taken not far removed from where the previous two were taken. If one looks at the aerial view of the property in the first picture, in the top-right corner there is a small area of grassland; what would have been an offshoot of our neighbour’s grassland in previous times. After my sister, Corinne, died in the Summer of 2013 we named that area of grassland Corinne’s field.
A general view down over the main area of grass.
So now we are back standing just outside the Eastern side of the house looking South-East out over the main area where the dogs are walked twice a day. The picture was taken a little before noon and shows the low mist that has been with us for about two weeks.
Nature’s beauty.
Above, another photograph picking up on the mist that has been with us for some days. Until yesterday!
This is what I call a Winter day!
Yesterday dawned cold, clear and frosty. As this picture of one of our tall pine trees so vividly demonstrates. (The tree edges our driveway, about half-way to the house.)
So will close today’s post with three more pictures of a frosty Saturday morning in Merlin, Oregon, USA.
A frosty yet sunny morning.
oooo
Frost on a bamboo tree.
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It really is a beautiful world at times.
oooo
So there you are, Sue!
Needless to say, Jean and I are reminded almost daily how lucky we and all our animals are at finding such a beautiful place to live. I can’t ever imagine taking it for granted.
On New Year’s Day I published the first part of a film called Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream. Then yesterday came the second part. I found it a remarkable film. Because, while the first part reminded the viewer of the list, the long list, of things that are wrong with these present times, the second part highlighted the many currents of positive changes that are taking place here and now.
Without hope there is nothing.
The film is available to watch on Top Documentary Films and here is the introduction offered in that place.
Of all the innumerable beliefs and hypotheses that make up our contemporary industrial perspective on life there is one that is dominant and very frequent. That’s the assumption that we are disconnected, from everyone and everything. This belief configures basically all our ideas and actions. There’s a crucial fallacy that we are separate. But, if there is only one, then whatever I do to you I’m actually doing it to myself, my family, and my children.
Spiritual attitude has long instructed that partition is actually an illusion. However, in the past, the narrative that’s been exchanged in the modern world, whether consciously or unconsciously, has been that the world functions like a huge machine made of separate parts like a big clock. For the past four centuries, the scientific established practice has been trying to take the clock apart, and figure out how it functions, so we can use it for our own ambitions.
This rigid aspect meant that instead of realizing the relation between things, we were analyzing and taking apart those very same things. So, what developed was kind of disintegrated view of the natural world. And we became entranced with the ability that came out of this technology, and we lost our relations to each other; we lost our connection to the enigma of the cosmos.
Although the modern worldview is superior on Earth, it’s valuable to identify that it’s not the only worldview. Traditional, native cultures are not so concentrated on “advancement”, rather they’re focused on their health and persistence of the community, and they see the interdependence of all things. They try to recognize that we’re related to everything… to the animals, fish, plants, trees, birds, and even to the microorganisms. Indigenous people of the world have a particularly important role to play at this moment in history. We need them to come forward and explain how they see things.
The film was produced by the Pachama Alliance, an organisation I hadn’t come across before. Their website is here and on the About page one learns:
Purpose
The Pachamama Alliance, empowered by our partnership with indigenous people, is dedicated to bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet. Our unique contribution is to generate, and engage people everywhere in, transformational conversations and experiences consistent with this purpose. We weave together indigenous and modern worldviews such that human beings are in touch with their dignity and are ennobled by the magnificence, mystery and opportunity of what is possible for humanity at this time. We are here to inspire and galvanize the human family to generate a critical mass of conscious commitment to a thriving, just and sustainable way of life on Earth. This is a commitment to transforming human systems and structures that separate us, and to transforming our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with the natural world.
If you have read this post so far, then you will enjoy this video. More than enjoy it; you will find it inspiring and liberating.
Another organisation mentioned in the film was Bioneers, also not previously known to me. Their website is here. The organisation describes itself, in part:
Collective Heritage Institute – Bioneers is a non-profit New Mexico corporation founded in 1990 by Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons. The overarching mission of Bioneers is the advancement of holistic education pertaining to global social, cultural and environmental issues. Bioneers identifies progressive yet nature-honoring solutions to rising challenges of instability, inequality, and unsustainable growth and disseminates this knowledge via independent media, events, and community action networks.
There is much on these two websites to offer hope.
Those of you who watched Part One of Awakening the Dreamer that was published yesterday could be excused for thinking that it was a very gloomy window on our world at the start of 2014.
Park those feelings and watch Part Two.
The Hope
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/52496263]
ooOOoo
Tomorrow, Friday, I will complete this run of four days by dropping in on a few of the organisations named in these films plus a few other items.
A very Happy New Year to you and all your loved ones!
Yesterday (I’m tempted to write last year!), I posted a little tale about the donkey in the well; essentially a message about being happy.
My original plan for today was to post a series of photographs of some animals next door that our neighbours, Larry and Janell, have recently adopted.
But then Jean and I watched a documentary two evenings ago that had us both spellbound. The documentary, Awakening the Dreamer, consisted of two 45-minute films. The first highlighting the precarious nature of our present times. The second showing the accelerating pace of people all across the world actively changing things for the better. Hence the title of the post The Pain and the Hope.
So here’s Part One. I do so hope you can find the time to watch it.
Depending on just where in the world you are, the New Year of 2014 is anything from a few to twenty-four hours away. How that year turns out will, to a very great extent, depend on millions and millions of behaviours. In other words, the behavioural choices each of us makes. Because, as millions of us already understand, our world on this, our only, Planet is facing changes potentially beyond our imagination. Caring for our Planet and all of life upon it is meaningless without those behavioural choices being the right ones for our Planet.
A couple of days ago, I read the following on Facebook. It seemed an appropriate tale for the start of 2014.
ooOOoo
Now what?
One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.
He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.
A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.
As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
MORAL :
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
Free your heart from hatred – Forgive.
Free your mind from worries – Most never happens.
Live simply and appreciate what you have.
Give more.
Expect less from people but more from yourself.
You have two choices … smile and close this page, or pass this along to someone else to share the lesson.
Learning from Dogs 